What RUINED Ren & Stimpy? (How John K DESTROYED His Own Legacy)

[Music] foreign [Music] was a revolutionary time period for Creative driven cartoons Nickelodeon led the charge with shows such as Doug and Rugrats but nothing quite compared to the unbridled chaos of Ren and Stimpy for those who know about this show I could imagine you're already reminiscing about the over-the-top expressions and high quality animation of the series it was a caliber of cartoon that was unlike anything else and a put Nickelodeon on the map however the production of this show led by its creator John quickfaluci was plagued with issues that range from missing deadlines fighting Network Executives and raging advertisers and overworking artists to the point of exhaustion but none of these problems compared to the alleged abuse of drawn towards his victims robin bird and Katie rice two girls who suffered at the hands of John during his reign with many people at the time knowing about this Open Secret but doing nothing nothing about it a story so disturbing that it effectively destroyed the legacy of John K along with the reputation of one of the most influential cartoons of the 1990s a show that had a meteoric rise that was followed by utter collapse so let's take a closer look and find out what ruined Ren and Stimpy The Ren and Stimpy show was created by Canadian animator John crickfaluci better known as John K originally born in a suburb of Quebec Canada John was obsessed with drawing and the magic of seeing how animation worked after something as simple as putting together a Huckleberry Hound flip book John was hooked on the spot he briefly went to Sheridan College in Ontario but found the educational system restrictive and stifling towards his creativity after he was expelled for not attending classes John moved to LA determined to enter the animation industry using his own drive and talent he was also lucky enough to be in the network of his two animation Heroes Bob Clampett and Ralph bakshi Clampett was one of the original lead animators helming Looney Tunes shorts in the 1930s and 40s he had a love of surrealistic art violent slapstick and playfully messing with the sensors Ralph bakshi is an independent adult-oriented animator who created such films as Fritz the cats cool world and American pop and that is adult with a capital A his movies frequently dealt with racism sex violence politics and the Urban Decay of America in the 1970s knowing all this it is no wonder John got along with them so well Clampett pulled some strings in his Network and helped Jon find gigs working for Studios such as filmation Hanna-Barbera and Deke the work was steady but formulaic and dull with John wanting to expand into more expressive fluid animation luckily Ralph reached out to Jon in 1987 offering him a supervising and directing role on Mighty Mouse the new adventures for CBS with Ralph's guidance Jon gained valuable experience managing teams and seeing the complete pipeline of an episode's creation to the Final Cuts he spent a year working on Mighty Mouse before moving on to another project The New Adventures of Beanie and Cecil on ABC it was an animated episodic reboot of the classic 1960s TV series helmed by the Clampett family the show was caught in the midst of negotiations with ABC as Bob had passed away in 1984 and his family was struggling to find the right developer for the job in 1988 the Clampett insisted on having John K brought on board as part of the deal as he knew how to capture the same style of Bob's animation there were a number of delays and issues between John and the network after airing only five episodes The New Adventures of Beanie and Cecil was canceled due to creative differences and yes this will be a recurring theme in the video so sit tight how however he still had the support of the Clampett family and more importantly met a wide array of people while working there John invited them to join him after beanie and Cecil ended creating their own independent Animation Studio dubbed spumko originally consisting of artist Bob Camp lyd nailer Jim Smith and John K spumko was a Rowdy group of animators scrapping by but fed up with the stale and boring work that dominated TV animation allegedly the building they had purchased as their headquarters was originally a converted brothel used by Paramount complete with cramped dark rooms but they made do teaming up with Courier films to animate a lively title sequence for the comedy film Troop Beverly Hills in 1989. a few months later spumko would get the opportunity of a lifetime and the trades for Creator driven cartoon pitches John brought some of his ideas to Nickelodeon John met with the vice president of animation production Vanessa Kofi and presented three concepts to her most of them flocked but Vanessa was intrigued by two unusual characters a dog and a cat who were supposed to be the pets of a child from this show idea called your gang John K originally created the characters for Ren and Stimpy in 1978 while in college the design for Wren was based off an Elliott irwit photograph postcard called New York City 1946 showing a goofy looking Chihuahua and a sweater Stimpy was inspired by a gruesome twosome a 1945 Tweety Bird cartoon directed by Bob Clampett featuring some bulbous nose cats Vanessa loved their designs and wanted them to have their own show asking Jon to create a pilot with the rest of the spumko team John had done it this was his chance to shake up the animation industry with a talented team of artists he knew could deliver on such out their ideas the pilot titled big house Blues was finished and gained a ton of positive buzz on the film festival circuit leading up to the series premiere red and Stimpy was on its way to becoming one of the original Nicktoons joining the 1991 lineup along with classical chupa's Rugrats and jumbo films Doug and yeah one of these cartoons was definitely not like the others Rugrats Was A Slice of Life show exploring the world of imaginative toddlers Doug was a quirky understated story following a boy's journey through Middle School Ren and Stimpy was completely insane and let's be honest not really for children but hey that was half the fun of it now I did some digging and actually found some legal precedent for why Nickelodeon was looking for such a diverse array of shows in 1890 the Federal Communications Commission or FCC passed a mandate called the children's television act it required networks oriented towards children to Foster positive social and cognitive development through their programs basically having wholesome and sincere messaging incorporated into the storytelling designed to turn kids into more emotionally well-rounded adults a lot of this done from the carbon copy Saturday morning cartoons from the 1980s and how they were just trying to sell toys now today this is pretty standard practice with morals or life lessons being routinely integrated into most mainstream children's media and at the time both Doug and Rugrats seem to accomplish these goals pretty easily Rugrats would cover subjects that little kids would be worried about like sibling rivalry or facing your fears Doug covered things more oriented towards middle schoolers like going out on a first date or having body image issues Rin and Stimpy was primarily intended to be about entertainment Point Blank and John K did not want to sugarcoat anything he believed that kids were tougher and more capable of handling dark subject matter than the executives of the network gave them credit for now there's definitely some truth in that but mostly he wasn't willing to overhaul the stories he wanted to do just to appease some corporate mandate however any program that did not attempt to follow this rule could risk getting canceled for any future Seasons also they could not advertise any products from the show that was airing at the time for example no Rugrats themed toy ads during an episode but even with these limitations nobody could have expected the massive impact that Ren and Stampy would make changing the TV animation landscape forever [Music] happy originally premiering on August 11 1991 the red and Stimpy show follows the episodic Adventures of Ren hoyk a psychotic high-strung asthma Hound Chihuahua and Stimson J cat an incredibly stupid but loving Manx cat using absurdist humor and exaggerated slapstick each episode would follow Ren and Stimpy encountering new scenarios and conflicts and a variety of locations the show also had a group of recurring segments and fake in-universe ads like ask Dr Stupid and powdered Toast Man though they had a volatile relationship stem B was endlessly loving and tolerant of rin's outburst and deep down Rin genuinely loved Stimpy for being such a supportive friend did he have a weird violent way of showing it yeah constantly but they were a fun Duo working off of each other's strengths and weaknesses to get out of trouble or make a quick Buck despite right being on a network intended for children Ren and Stimpy also had a lot of appeal towards adults they loved the bizarre highly expressive animation memorable Side characters and off-putting stories which was a stark contrast to the other shows on Nickelodeon at the time the humor is also widely unique I have never seen another show that goes so far out of its way to consistently make the audience uncomfortable for me I was a kid during the 90s and when I watched this show there were times where I would physically pull back away from the screen struggling to understand what I was even watching but when it's funny it is unbelievably funny especially if you can handle disgusting and cringy situations written Stimpy almost immediately became a ratings Juggernaut for Nickelodeon in its first season they had double sometimes tripled the ratings of other Nicktoons on the platform from 9 1991-1992 it was the most popular cable TV show on any network with all this positive reception you would think they'd be printing off mugs like nobody's business right surprisingly red and Stampy did not have much in the way of merchandising at first I know this sounds pretty shocking today what with Nickelodeon's aggressive marketing of SpongeBob being plastered onto any product you can think of and he may as well be the American version of Hello Kitty at this point but at the time they were attempting to be proactive and not have any overexploit of merchandise don't worry that did not last long it's still the 90s after all just a few years later Ren and Stampy merchandise failed retail shelves t-shirts Halloween costumes video games plush toys food tie-ins you name it on the production end things were looking up at the start of season one John K had a supportive relationship with Vanessa Kofi the same programming executive and Nick responsible for green lighting the show in the first place they had a surprisingly wholesome camaraderie Vanessa appreciated John's passion and craftsmanship as an integral draw for the show and Jon recognized the power of Vanessa advocating for them as a bridge between the other Executives but balancing all that creative energy needed support with the other artists of spumko most notably Bob Cam doing what they could to keep things on track Bob Camp was John's second in command frequently directing and storyboarding some of the most popular episodes of red and Stimpy including Stimpy's invention other creative heads on board like Lynn Naylor Chris riccardi and Bill Ray utilize each of their skills of flash out episodes with an incredible roster of talent these artists were responsible for a lot of the Striking visual cues that give red and Stimpy such a distinct look once more corporate suits got involved with weighing in on episode content and budgetary issues tensions started to rise each episode became a tug of war between spumko and the network scripts that were already approved and in production would get notes demanding changes and edits because of their solid working relationship Vanessa would make deals with a studio asking them to create some heartwarming toned down episodes to appease to other Executives ever the shitsterer John K pushed the boundaries of both the network and the sensors as far as he could get away with Jon notoriously hated pathos meaning episodes deliberately made to pull at your heartstrings so he would push them to their most absurd extreme to still keep his end of the bargain this resulted in episodes Like Son of Stimpy where Stimpy goes on an emotional desperate search to find his long-lost fart it is so obviously dumb and grow house then nobody should take it seriously but episodes like that fulfilled the quota they needed to do truly gross stuff and other episodes mostly John saw Ren and Stimpy as the safest project he ever worked on this did not last long though gradually communication started to break down getting to the point where he would only communicate with a network through his lawyer there were a number of reasons that warped spumko's relationship with the network but the most obvious of them was John K's unwavering exhausting perfectionism he had the final say over every single drawing every layout every keyframe of Animation everything had to be approved by him first before going into production in accordance with his vision being a Creator driven show most of the artists accepted this at first as they all knew it was for the greater good and in service of producing the highest quality episodes possible many of them also cited that working on red and Stampy greatly improve their skills as artists the environment could be harsh but it made them work even harder to win his approval and produce work of lasting quality and with so much of the show's budget going to the animation they had to cut costs somewhere specifically The Sound and Music Department their sound design was Innovative using unusual sound effects and outdated music sometimes classical music from the public domain John K himself provided the voice of Ren with the rest of the spumco staff filling in for the background characters Billy West was hired to play Stimpy as he had previously enjoyed working with Jon on the beanie and Cecil show for Stimpy's voice he opted to do his voice as a higher pitch version of Larry from The Three Stooges keeping with the lack of tradition at spumko they did not actually use model sheets or lip sync guides during production this lack of consistency was exactly the vi John K was looking for with each pose being pushed to distorted but hilarious extremes body shapes would contort and squish to match each character's emotions wanting them to emulate the same characters he loved watching growing up one of the most iconic visual Staples of written Stimpy was incorporating a series of gorgeously painted but revolting close-ups as explained by layout assistant Mr Lawrence aka the future voice actor Plankton this dedication to the grotesque was just another day at the office for spumko quote if we're going to show a still it better be great it better be this great paint and we can hold on you know and be disgusting you know as as gross and we're gonna make you sit on it because it's so beautiful but yet it's so so gross end quote these gross close-ups were so iconic that a lot of other contemporary animated shows pay homage to them like sponge Bob and fibia Flapjack and Drawn Together the attention to detail and highly expressive animation was one of the biggest highlights of Ren and Stimpy as a series but it was also expensive and nearly unsustainable long term on a TV budget despite this John K was not willing to compromise on his vision for the show they had significant episode release delays due to the complexity of each scene even with shopping some of the animation out to carbuncle cartoons a studio helm by John's friends Bob Jacques and Kelly Armstrong and Canada not to mention messing with deadlines set by the network episodes would be promised by specific dates but then be delayed for months and over budget pissing off both fans and advertisers there's even a joke about this in The Simpsons where there's a nomination for a Ren and Stimpy episode but the clip wasn't finished so they had nothing to show Ren and Stimpy season premiere with the first season including six episodes Nickelodeon was now pushing for spumko to produce 20 episodes in the second season now that's not unusual for a standard season of TV but this is Ren and Stimpy and with how detailed the character animation gets it was substantially more work than the Crooked handle with their existing team quote we weren't even very far into season two we were already hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget and months behind schedule I mean we missed the air date for the very second week of Ren and Stimpy and we had to rerun the first we cartoon that pissed off advertisers big time you know because John could not let the cartoons go End quotes from Bob Camp the feature creep was very real and the pressure started getting to John who was lashing out with his frustrations at the staff he barely slept and would stay up all night at the office obsessively combing through everybody's work routinely an artist would present their finished piece to him only for John to trash it or demand they redo a substantial amount to meet his own high standards one of these artists Chris ricardi actually called him out about this practice quote I mean at one point I did kind of lose it and I quit and I said this kind of criticism does not do anything to make me better it just you know makes me hate you end quote now John did apologize to him with Chris coming back to the studio but the overwhelming tension was getting to everyone Nickelodeon did not help much often sending stories back after they had already been approved and in the storyboard phase causing even more delays however the real breaking point of John's relationship with a studio as he remembers it was the creation of the Season 2 Episode man's best friend in it rain and Stimpy are aggressively trained as Champion show dogs by George liquor a grotesque authoritarian figure with abusive father Vibes now for contacts it is important we address something very specific about John K's childhood growing up as a kid John was absolutely terrified of his father frequently citing his use of verbal abuse and intimidation to keep Jon in line he frequently hung out by himself in the basement drawing and often had to hide his comic book bucks under the bed which his father always found and damaged claiming they would rot his brain John cites basing a lot of George lucar's angry facial takes off his father's struggling to suppress his own rage quote so he's holding back all this violence and I'd see his face twisting and boiling I was like oh but it was entertaining end quote he also dismissed John's dreams of making it as a famous cartoonist with John spending his adulthood working tirelessly to prove him wrong after the season 1 episode space Madness aired to widespread Acclaim he received a call from his father with a Gruff butt loaded congratulations quote my dad he called me and said oh you did it I was wrong you pulled it off I don't know how it's pretty weird stuff but it seems like everybody likes it but don't do the space ones the space ones are stupid John was asked did you do any space ones after that which you replied no I gotten so used to obeying my dad following his rules end quote yikes throughout the production the spumko staff saw wren's character as being a lot like Jon himself with all the same emotional volatility and ego issues additionally John admits the basing George liquor on his own father's personality with all this in mind it really reframes the subject matter in man's best friend and a sadder more upsetting way and the network thought so too the violence used in this episode was so graphic and visceral that Vanessa intervened she was worried that there was no way that they could air the episode without parents freaking out or losing valuable advertising deals Nickelodeon band The Finnish episode from airing but John did not take this decision lightly far from it he was majorly pissed and determined to show Man's Best Friend by any means necessary and a quote from slinged his longtime friend and colleague Tom menten recalls quotes Nick banned the episode and John resorted to floating it as a bootleg VHS tape just to get it out there this was all front page news and variety and The Hollywood Reporter in September of 1992 end quote Furious that he went over their heads Nickelodeon terminated their contract with John K in late September of 1992 replacing him with Bob Camp as a show director and Billy West filling in for both of the league characters now Nickelodeon initially offered a consulting position to John for the remainder of the series but he refused seeing it as selling out Vanessa had the very unfortunate role of delivering the news to him quoted and slimed she says I was the last person who wanted John to leave the show but he gave us no choice you can't be in production with a producer who's out of control end quote once the news went public Vanessa was even receiving death threats from irate fans it became a massive very public breakup dividing the crew in two with some leaving after John's firing on principle and others sticking around to work with Bob Camp his de facto second in command at the newly created games animation a studio created and overseen by Nick the transition was simply awful with Bob knowing some people would see him as a Trader for not sticking with his colleagues but he was determined to not let Rin and Stimpy die a premature death due to management and budget issues to this day he's estranged from Jon with aspiring being his last day they ever spoke to each other bobcamp and games animation crew did their best to emulate Jon's sense of humor but they could not quite get it right viewers and critics both found the humor lackluster and the animation missing the same Panache it used to have with Seasons three to five seeing increasingly lower satisfaction from fans then on December 16 1995 red and Stampy had ended finishing its original run on Nickelodeon after airing Five Seasons and 51 episodes unfortunately Ren Stampy's ultimate downfall or at least the mass of blow to its Legacy that would actually stick would come sometime after and at the hands of the same man who is so Central to the series identity and success and now folks we've arrived at the most disturbing part of the video at least from a subject matter point of view now I do have to say for the record that these are allegations from a legal standpoint sure there is a lot of corroborating evidence to support them but again for the record alleged okay let's go on March 29th 2018. an explosive article from BuzzFeed news broke outing John K as not just a sexual predator but one with illegal Tendencies two of his victims robin bird and Katie rice spoke with writer Ariane Lange describing how they were both huge childhood fans of Ren and Stimpy and wrote letters to John K asking for drawing advice wanting to be good enough to someday work on the show normally these kinds of fan letters should get a polite encouraging response back and that would be the end of it but sadly it was not John kept things going sending them drawing supplies sketch is and inviting them out to spumko for a tour and this is where things get much worse the BuzzFeed article details that John K has had a history of preying on underage female fans what started off as answering fan mail spiraled into him forming inappropriate toxic relationships using the success of Rin and Stimpy to keep them in this orbit these allegations include that Not only was he communicating with Robin and Katie that he had been actively grooming them what's worse it was an Open Secret in the animation industry virtually everybody knew with Robin publicly working at spumco as a teenager John was Brazen enough that he has been photographed with both of them an exchanged tons of letters as seen in the BuzzFeed article that Robin and Katie had saved from their youth both Robin and Katie did eventually work at spamco and communicated over AOL they shared Darkly similar stories of their experiences with him being sexually harassed and pressured into unbalanced romantic Relationships by a man more than twice their age they were both struggling for the Pains of adolescents both Robin and Katie had low self-esteem doubted their abilities as artists and found the validation of a famous cartoonist as signs that they were special quote I know what everybody's going to say why didn't you just leave well because this told me when I was 13 that I was special and I don't have any self-esteem so I believe it end quote that's not to say they did not find all the positive attention weird at the time though as quoted in the article Katie wrote The Following in her diary around the early winter of 1996 when she was only 14 years old quote I think this 40 year old man is hitting on me but he's never perverted he's also very nice he gives me a lot of drawing tips end quote in the summer of 1997 Robin moved in with John when she was only 2016 and became his girlfriend with a whopping 25-year age Gap where there was always conflict with Robin detailing how at home he would complain she was nagging him and making him feel guilty blaming her for his emotional instability at the spumko office Robin cried at her desk constantly and mentally grappled with how torn she felt being there quote I thought I'm getting offered a job I'm getting offered an internship there's someone who can take care of me so I I just went with it because it's it's what I always wanted and what I thought I still wanted end-quote after bird left John K for good in 2002 he started pursuing Katie more avidly after ghosting her for three years Katie had just turned 18 and had been rejected by an art school with John offering a job at spumko to her after graduating instead with few other prospects Katie worked off and on at spumko and at John's home office from 2003 to 2006. as a layout artist on adult party cartoon and the close but no cigar music video for Weird Al Yankovic in 2004 while working at a different job working for Disney Katie received a series of needy emails from John asking her to date him saying he was jealous of her old high school Crush eventually the sexual harassment was too much to bear and Katie finally left in 2007 after coming across some truly vile material on John's computer which she immediately reported to the police the BuzzFeed article itself gets into a lot more than I can actually say on here out of content restriction from YouTube so I recommend reading the whole thing if you haven't seen it yet it is very upsetting and difficult to stomach but worth reading if you want to understand everything they went through after the article came out John K put out a bizarre 11 page non-apology on his blog he acknowledged that he had inappropriate relationships with them but did not expand on how far things had gone additionally John also brought up a mental health diagnosis he received in 2008 claiming he had both ADHD and bipolar disorder citing they led him to be completely incapable of controlling his impulses yeah that's a lousy excuse Not only was he trying to blame his actions on Mental Illness but he attempted to dredge up all the good times they used to have together while using both Robin and Katie's artwork without permission which is just straight up gross and manipulative now there are plenty of people out there who struggle with mental illness and have bad coping mechanisms for it but that range can be alcoholism drug abuse emotional eating or compulsive spending for John he was trying to use his devious Behavior as a scapegoat while blaming his quote-unquote mental illness this all of this was a long-term pattern of abusive behavior that these women will have to deal with the emotional and mental after effects for their rest of their lives they deserve to have as much distance away from him as humanly possible and are completely within their right to never have to think about him again a fellow YouTuber blame it on George has made a comprehensive video on this whole situation so if you want to hear more about the testimonials go check out that video I highly recommend it link is in the description unfortunately that's not the end of John K's story let's get into what happened to his creative Pursuits after he was fired from Nickelodeon because let me tell you it continued to go downhill upon leaving the original Ren and Stimpy show in 1992 John K continued to work in animation but struggled to find another project that would allow him the creative freedom he desired in the early 2000s spumko worked on a short-run fox kids TV series called The Ripping Friends about four muscular superhero brothers fighting crime it lasted one season before being canceled due to high production cost averaging four hundred thousand dollars an episode and not getting the ratings to justify a renewal after The Ripping Friends ended John began considering Reviving Ren and Stimpy in a new format that would allow him to fully explore his vision for the show but there was some friction with his plan given Jon's history it is no surprise that other networks were skeptical about his workplace reputation and ability to deliver episodes on time let alone on budget eventually Spike TV gave him a chance they were looking to expand their lineup of original Pro programming by adding in some male oriented adult cartoons along with Stripperella and Gary the Rat in 2002 John Inked a development deal with Spike TV to create Ren and Stimpy adult party cartoon as the executive producer and Lead writer he pledged to make a more extreme version of his classic show they figured with a high profile IP like Ray and Stimpy the reboot might just be the right property to get more eyes on their Network so how'd it turn out bad like really bad Billy West smelled blood in the water after reading some of the scripts he refused to return to voice Stimpy seeing adult party cartoon as career suicide this new iteration was so offensive and unfunny that it was canceled after only three episodes had aired but why wouldn't having more creative freedom and less censorship be the right bridge to make Rin and Stimpy truly for adults no not really this entire show is us the rider's fetish in disguise with uh no real attempts to actually conceal or disguise any event and it sucks ironically the amount of restrictions and tightrope walking required for Nickelodeon is what made the original series humor cruelly thrive in its prime ridden Stimpy was constantly teetering on the edge of being inappropriate but being just restrained enough to keep people guessing how far they would go as annoying as a sensors could be they provided a surprising amount of structure for episodes to nearly cross the line but never step over it the adult audience for the reboot was turned off by the extremely crude jokes graphic nudity and cruel amounts of violence with adult party cartoon the shock value is so frequent it became tedious and annoying to get through things were gross for the sake of being gross with Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette claiming quotes they don't pay me enough to watch cartoon characters eating snot end quote all right that all being said is there anything redeeming about the show well there's a notorious disturbing episode called Ren seeks help where Wren tries and fails to receive therapy from Mr horse for his extensive psychotic issues also Rin and Stampy are canonically bisexual now because people kept shipping them together back in the day I guess okay sure why not additionally adult party cartoons started having the same production issues that the original series did old habits die hard Jon kept fighting with the network and struggling to get advertisers but this time he did not have the same reliable crew of animators he was used to as many of his best artists had already left spumko the Colossal failure of adult party cartoon was actually the final nail in the coffin for the studio itself spumko was forced to shut down officially on June 18 2005. as he did not have enough money to pay their affiliate Studio carbuncle cartoons for their Finnish Outsource animation for of the show as of August 5th 2020 a reboot is in the works for Comedy Central but with one noticeable huge difference John K has no involvement with its creation whatsoever no royalties no production credits nothing this reboot has been heavily delayed due to the pandemic but it appears to be in production with both MTV and awesome Inc who have worked on the later seasons of Squidbillies and your pretty face is going to hell very little has been revealed about where it is so far in development but Billy West has confirmed he'll be returning as a voice actor along with several of the other original writers Joy of joy so now knowing what happened what have we learned from all of this as a Creator John K has a tremendous amount of talent passion and drive for what he does but he's also burned nearly every bridge in his past to get to where he is today and I want to be very clear on this next segment I have absolutely no sympathy for what John did as an adult how he treated the staff his immoral and disgusting Behavior towards his vulnerable fans getting kicked off his own show he was a grown ass man during all of that and there is zero justification for how he handled things with any of them if what he shared in the documentary about how he was raised is true then that sucks and I really do wish things would have worked out different for him honestly the amount of jokes send it around loud authoritary figures towering over our terrified Duo leads me to believe it probably is very accurate I didn't think about the context of that as a kid being too distressed directed by the wild animation and grossed out jokes but re-watching it now as an adult it's pretty uncomfortable and puts a lot of other things in perspective being raised in an environment with an unsupportive actively hostile parent who belittles what you're passionate about at such a young age can really do a lot of damage to a child's emotional development though granted John K is not the most reliable narrator and tends to downplay the extent of his own involvement with a lot of things but because of his repeated awful decisions he becomes the anti-hero actually the villain in his own story and I don't think he even recognizes it rather than dealing with the issues head-on he redirects his own internal pain onto others and hurtful unforgivable ways while watching the documentary happy happy joy joy for research it is abundantly clear just how many demons John K still has he reframed his own abuse as Creative Inspire operation for entertainment and carried that notion into adulthood without recognizing how much that damage still lingers it absolutely does not excuse or negate any of the Monstrous things he's done or how he's hurt others whether or not he's seriously working on getting help to address them in a substantial long-term way I really don't know but I hope he does I know it's dumb to say with all the garbage he's put other people through but really truly hope he does but I seriously doubt it John's career as a showrunner is over and justifiably so between the firing public backlash and expose pieces he's been blacklisted from the industry with him retiring in 2019 and there is no coming back from anything this heinous outside of that he still posed our tutorials on his blog fairly often and seems to maybe possibly had a better relationship with his father until his passing in 2020. uh I honestly have no idea he was also behind that whole Cal art style thing that was starting a lot of arguments online a few years ago but now I think it's just sour grapes since he's been out of the industry for so long now I know it's kind of a meme with a lot of animated films using this plot line nowadays but it is still true never underestimate the impact of generational trauma and how we can cause toxic destructive behaviors in children otherwise you will end up with a situation like this where everyone suffers for it the rise and fall of Ren and Stimpy was a roller coaster amazing Highs but devastating lows it really makes you wonder how differently things could have turned out if you didn't keep obsessively chasing his father's approval or how he could have redirected Decades of rage and perfectionism into creating a lasting positive environment for the staff at spumko but John K isn't built that way once Ren and Cindy became a massive ratings hit he bought into his own hype and doubled down refusing to compromise on anything once he had enough power to call the shots it was his way or the highway John craved the validation that came from seeing Ren and Stimpy his baby becoming a cultural milestone for Crater driven animation he trudged through working on lesser projects he hated and worked his way up being mentored by Legends like Bob Clampett and Ralph bakshi John has always struggled with setting insanely high standards for himself and his team independent of whatever budgetary and deadline restrictions a network gave him and when you mess with a Network's bottom line by missing deadlines and biting the hand that feeds you ratings alone will not be enough to save your show for some separating the art from the artist is a tough call problematic people frequently make great art but as a personal choice to still enjoy their work independent of knowing what happened for it to be made and if you still enjoy watching written Stimpy hey that is totally your call it will always be a highly influential iconic show with a dark checkered past the animation landscape was never the same after it was made and still one of the biggest reasons other creative driven shows like South Park or Gravity Falls exist today now I'm not certain of what to expect with the reboot or whether or not it will even be successful but I'm glad people working in the animation industry are being more vocal about rampant mistreatment as they should never have to tolerate that kind of abuse it's a long slow road to Improvement but with the help of social media their struggles have become more public and widely supported than ever we can even compare John K's history with a more recent example Justin Roiland and his highly public firing from the absurdist Sci-Fi adult cartoon Rick and Morty his misdeeds were also widely known in Hollywood with more than enough horror stories to share from the women and girls he targeted but now Rick and Morty and his sister Show solar opposites are continuing on without him now whether or not they'll feel the same independent of him really does not matter there is no going back he was deservedly outed for being a massive creep and hopefully it will send a message to the public that their actions do indeed have consequences fortunately enough both robin bird and Katie Rice have gone on to thrive 5. despite everything in their past Katie rice still works in the animation industry with her work being featured in Productions like The Book of Life DC superhero girls My Life as a Teenage Robot and the Animaniacs reboot for Robin she left the industry moving on to teach philosophy and undergraduate writing courses now the wounds are still there with Robin admitting she still has nightmares about them sometimes but mostly she understands exactly how messed up and wrong their interactions were and still are saying it's not necessary for someone to be like that to create great art you can have that going on in your head and you can use it to make art in fact you can work through it with art that's what a lot of ours do with their pain pain does create great art I do believe that but um you don't have to keep inflicting pain to create great art Robin I couldn't have said a better myself [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Saberspark

Views: 892,012

Keywords: saberspark, saber, animation, what ruined, what's ruining, ren and stimpy, ren & stimpy, john k, nickelodeon

Id: iD6iyVv_OTk

Length: 45min 14sec (2714 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023